Communication service providers in the recent past have represented three different markets: wireless, fixed line (Internet Protocol (IP)/wireline) and cable/broadband. Each service was separately provided through dedicated hardware and software and separately priced. Usage for billing purposes was a straightforward matter of monitoring time of usage, for instance.
Access providers are those service providers that provide IP connectivity between the end subscriber and the Internet, which can be characterized as providing a “communication” role in this value chain. These access providers are already experiencing a shift away from dial-up access to “always-on” broadband connections to homes and businesses. Content providers provide the video, text, voice and data that are communicated by the access providers. These content providers are experiencing a shift from a small number of communication formats to a large variety of formats.
Technological advances and customer demand for integrated access to a variety of voice, video and data services is increasingly causing a convergence in these markets. In particular, varied services such as basic e-mail, internet access, voice-over-IP (voIP), video mail are being provided as bundled service for use over a wide variety integrated devices, such as PCs, wireless phones, personal digital assistants (PDA), and Internet appliances. As used herein, xSPs, are defined as providers of IP-based services: wireless, cable/broadband, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Application Service Providers (ASPs), wireline and next-generation service providers.
xSPs are beginning to launch multiple services by aggregating content through partnerships with content owners. Being first to market with bundled service packages, these xSPs will be presented with great opportunities and great challenges to woo and win customers by offering new margin-rich services. But in order to retain the customer, win market share, and derive profits for the long term, these xSPs must have customer care and billing services that work in this complex new environment. Thus, once a customer is provisioned, mediation—capturing and measuring usage from different network elements—is the next hurdle in the multi-market, multi-service, multi-business model. Traditionally, all mediation by an xSP tended to be self-contained within that xSP's operation.
As networks increase in complexity and the value of real-time information expands, the ability to quickly and easily manage network changes and multiple formats is growing as well. Acting as the isolation layer, mediation systems such as Real-Time Processing Manager (RPM) advantageously provides the reliable data handling necessary to interface between ever-changing network elements and applications. The RPM enables operators to quickly introduce new services and change existing services. The module simultaneously supports existing network infrastructures as well as evolving infrastructures, enabling billing for events generated using network technologies such as TDMA (Time Division/Demand Multiple Access), CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), and CDMA2000.
Acting as the communications gateway for the collection of events, the RPM ultimately results in increased revenue for the service provider via accurate and reliable delivery of network usage data. RPM supports high-capacity data collection from multiple networks. It acts as collector, aggregator, reformatter, and distributor, enabling standardized processing of usage information generated in multi-vendor, multi-service networks. The Web-based user interface places more power into the hands of the user, lowering total cost of ownership by enabling the operator to configure and maintain the application regardless of the chosen delivery option. Configurable business rule definition, filtering, duplicate and gap checking, error processing, and other user definable parameters offer maximum flexibility in usage processing. This fully functional, modular application supports multiple market segments and technologies simultaneously, enabling the service provider to have a single, convergent mediation platform upon which to support its business needs. The RPM supports both prepaid and postpaid networks in a single mediation environment, enabling the carrier to provide diverse services to its customers without sacrificing revenue assurance, flexibility, and control. Also, since the RPM serves as a transparent isolation layer between applications and service/network elements, the impact to the systems with which it interfaces is minimal.
Supporting both circuit-switched as well as IP networks, the RPM application provides a simplified and standardized interface for the acquisition of billing data. Its capabilities include: (a) convergent pre-paid and post-paid mediation support; (b) event validation, editing, gap and duplicate checking; (c) error correction (individual and mass); (d) carrier control of event collection processes via GUI/table-driven parameters; (e) event aggregation, reformatting, event correlation, and call assembly; (f) enterprise-specific field validation, business validation, data manipulation rules; (g) filtering and grouping; (h) reformat definition/application; (i) revenue assurance: audits and controls with extensive reporting and analysis; (j) mediation data record search capability; (k) role-based security; (l) multi-standard roamer processing.
Thus, known mediation systems such as RPM have a number of desirable features, such as succeeding in gathering usage data from various types of network elements (NE) and distributing processed usage data to various billing-related systems. However, customers for RPM often have specific needs to interface to new network elements as collection points. Furthermore, the desired billing arrangements with customers often require correlating events contained in the usage data and to assembly the records. This correlation and aggregation of events is complicated by the diverse types of services represented by the different network elements 18 and the needs of the billing-related systems 30. For example, a single billable transaction may entail a communication event that includes multiple connections or handoffs, reflected in multiple usage data records that need to be combined. As another example, a customer desires to have a bill that reflects the total time duration of the transaction events (e.g., audio or video communication). In yet another example, the type of communication comprises a brief transaction such as a financial electronic data transfer wherein the volume of transactions (i.e., number of events) is the basis of the billing. In yet another example, specific accounts are to be billed, which requires identifying matching usage data from the various network elements that corresponds to each specific account. Correlating and assembling event data is complicated by having related usage data arrive in any sequence, records may be in error or duplicative, may arrive in a different data type format.
Conventional RPM applications address these needs by developing specifically tailored correlation and aggregation functions of known network elements and billing-related systems. These functions are coded, compiled, and distributed with the application. The customers for the RPM application are limited to using these pre-existing event correlation/aggregation functions.
Consequently, a significant need exists for a network element data handler for a mediation system for a converged network system for that may be configured by the xSP customer.